It does in his use case, which seems to be a relatively dodgy day trading firm, they are the ones who instigate the fees not the bitcoin network. Funding this by using localbitcoins would have cut down his wait time and his fees on the buy side, however for funding his account that firm would charge those fees whether it was bitcoin or bank transfer. Sure he would have paid small transaction fees on his bitcoin transactions but they would still be a fraction of the $35 international transfer fee from the bank.
